9 months

June 22, 2009

SHE CRAWLS!!

Father’s Day weekend was the weekend Sava started crawling. She had been schooching around pretty good for the last week: Getting up on all fours; pivoting her bottom around, and getting across a room in a gradual zig zagging arc pattern. Also she has been sliding backwards for a month (sitting on her bum or on her belly and pushing her arms against the floor). But on Friday afternoon amidst a pile of books, she learned how to keep her front arms straight and locked upright while alternating front and back limb action: the advent of true crawling.

A major, phenomenal shift has occurred. Now she can couple motivation with ability. Now we get to see more of her personality emerge- if personality is to be understood as ambition and the pursuit of one’s attractions and desires. The house must be scoured, battened down, secured.

She took her first tentative crawl on Friday (lucky mother’s intuition: I caught it on tape) and by Saturday she was zooming all over the house. Something has happened to her: it is like the joy of the new frontier has unleashed this manic reservoir of energy previously locked away in her bone marrow or something. Now there is this feverish desire to explore, and to do away completely with naps. Silly mortal- who could sleep when there is this dusty corner to lick? By Sunday we were completely exhausted; I had already been through two minor breakdowns and one teensy panic attack- and had forgotten entirely about Father’s Day until the afternoon when Jamba said (innocently, gently) "I’m just going to pop into Old Navy and check out their Father’s Day sale". Ouch. I tried to make it up to him by giving him a footrub that night, and he gratefully passed out at the previously unimaginable hour of 9:30 pm while mumbling something about how it was the nicest present/ father’s day anyone could ever want. Truly, we are parents now.

So Sunday evening Jamba and I are on our bed, completely defeated- defeated but with this small happy tired center of joy and pride (a chewy nugget of warmth), watching Journey to the Center of the Earth, with Sava in the middle, and she is still just out of her mind with energy. Climbing over my body like I am Mt. Everest, tumbling in between us. Righting herself and swimming furiously towards the TV to grab at the bars at the foot of the bed to stand up, rock herself violently back and forth. She is going to eat the TV if I don’t do something. I grab her heel and pull her back to me (what a fun game!!), thinking to restart the whole process, like the bed is her treadmill. She will have to get tired at some point, right?

Right?


June 16, 2009

Okay now your favorite thing is when your dad puts his hand up to your mouth and fans it while you ‘awwwwww” into his hand and make an Indian war cry. By the end of that day, you were already starting to bring your hand up to your mouth by yourself, and looking at us with wide expectant eyes as if waiting for that wonderful sound to emerge again.

You are fascinated by sound. Anytime you are around a canister or cup of any size you experiment by bringing it up to your mouth and crooning into it, to see what happens to the sound when it gets amplified. Crawling into your toybox and singing into the cave of it. You love the drum, the piano, the ukelele, the recorder, and the harmonica we just found in the hall closet.

The sounds you are making are: “Aaaaaaahhhhhhahhhh” (done loud like a trumpet, careening up and down the scales, and whipping around the room like a lasso that is performing a sonic probe of the volumetric space (like a bat, like a whale); Also a screech that sounds like a pterodactyl swooping down onto its prey; and of course the perennial favorites “dadadadadadada” and “mmmmmmaaa ma”. Your daddy just told me that in the morning when you two wake up, he sometimes sees you looking at him, softly saying "dah dah dah dah dah" to yourself. And when you are crying for the boob or because you are tired, you purse your lips into a tiny squinch and make that “mmmmmmm” and it sounds exactly like a small little speaker in your throat has blown out. That same soft crackling noise. I have to get it on tape. I really do because there are sounds that are going in and out of publication. For instance- one of the first sounds you ever made sounded exactly like you were saying “erin” (well, more like ‘ey- wren’) and now you never make it anymore.

Today you said “hi”. The thing is, you have a pretty large range of vocal sounds, so you say a lot of words on accident but there doesn’t seem to be meaning or communication behind it. Like you will not repeat them back to us when we get excited and start saying “Hi sava! Hi! Hi! Hi! Can you say Hi?” You just look at us like we are really odd, and promptly move on to the next, all-absorbing experience.

There is so much to write about. It kind of wrecks me that an entire month has gone by without meaningful journaling. That is to be expected with a move (we moved up to our new house in Harrisonburg at the beginning of the month and have been hectically trying to settle in (read: paint an entire two-story house, organize: reorganize: reorganize again finding the perfect state of settle, construct new garden beds and slap some herbs into the ground and all of the things your parents are compelled to do to finally feel at home in a space) and all of these things take up a lot of the time-space continuum and do not leave a lot left over for things like journaling about the profundities of one’s precious baby daughter. Which is a damn shame really. For what could be more important than watching you grow? Does it really matter where the cans of foods go in the cupboards and where the teacups? And yet.. I still find myself praying for long nap times and have to temper my disappointment when you wake up precipitously (but wait- I almost had that basement shelf put up!!). Because I am a goddamn protestant-raised daughter, cursed by a pressure to perform, to complete, to hack away at the to-do list. Aurgh.

I am trying to be a really good mother. Honest. I am trying. But it is as hard as it is the easiest, most joyful job in the universe. To wake up. Don’t go to sleep. Wake up. Wake up and witness, wake up and dance with her. Don’t go back to sleep. Don’t be buried by your duties, your sense of purpose. Witness.

You, who are always present, completely and nakedly honest to your desires and your appetite for life, you constantly pull me back to an appreciation of the real. I actually looked at old baby photos the other day (I can’t believe I am already at this point- how can you be 9 months already?) and was shocked at how small you used to be. How quickly this time is passing, and you shedding old skin every day like a chrysalis.

Your dad and I have been talking about how these last few weeks in particular have been an enhanced period of transformation. He keeps shaking his head at the wonder of it: just last week, you seemed to shift from being a baby to being a child. A little girl. A kid. What is it??? That you are almost crawling, and every day more motile? We turn our heads and somehow, magically, you scooch to the other corner of the room. How did you do that? (A complex series of body wiggles and rolls). We place you in the crib and seconds later you have pulled yourself up on the bars and are leaning over the rails, looking down at the floor- studying the physics of altitude, velocity, plotting your course. You are on your hands and knees and you rock back and forth like you are humping the floor (we giggle, like schoolchildren at a naughty joke).

No- it is not that- not all that movement. It is this sudden shift in your face- a lengthening and leaning. An awareness in your eyes. An increasing prettiness and poise in the way you hold your head on your neck. Or maybe it is your growing sense of humour- your desire to cause laughter. Clapping so that we will then applaud. Cause and effect? What is it? Sometimes I look at you and imagine being enveloped by you. Dwarfed. I feel your shoulder and can imagine leaning my head against your strong adult shoulder someday. You are just so sturdy and strong and vibrant and vital. You seem like a teenager already, with these giant (95th percentile!) hands and feet. Maybe it is just that I need to start hanging around normal sized people more often- I am losing perspective. You are larger than you were last week. That is all I know.

It is so interesting to be around a child in such an active state of transformation. We older people, who can trick the eye into presenting an illusion of stasis, we can settle around each other into comfortable routines, and forget to LOOK at each other. To daily memorize the faces and record the particular nuances of our speech, body habits, smells. But you who are so precious, because you illustrate our change, our collective passage through time in such a painfully magnified way. How often I grab you to me and squeeze, inhaling fiercely your smell. Close my eyes to better feel the impossible softness of your skin, to memorize you as you are now, and never will be again.

I am in love with you. That state of being in love, where you lie on the bed and look into each other’s eyes perfectly content for hours on end- I am there. We are there together. The metaphors of to drink, to eat the beloved in the poems, in the sainted verse, I can finally claim without embarrassment. Because you return my passion, without question or thought of doubt. You do not mind my clutchings and all the deep inhaling, although you will soon enough. For now I too am your drink, the deep well. You cry to leave my arms, my sight and smell.

You are inches from crawling. You love being flown through the air like an airplane. You love jumping on the trampoline in my arms. I hold you tightly with my hand on your head so that it doesn’t jiggle too much, and we jump up and down in slow careful elevations. After we are done jumping together, we sit down on the trampoline and I make you pop like a jumping bean while you squeal and try to hold your balance. You love being upside down. You love thumping your chest like a gorilla, and have discovered that a naked belly makes a wonderful drum. You love balls. You love pulling books off the bookshelf and flinging them over your shoulder and tearing the pages. (Tearing paper and crinkling plastic is a major passion). You love the game where I pretend to drop you and catch you right before you hit the ground. You love it when three of us surround you and spontaneously start clapping and laughing and cheering for you. It sends you to the moon. You have started to clap all the time now. You clap when you see Nico- also you squeal with delight sometimes to see her come into the room after a brief absence. You clap when you see Kitty. You love cheerios and can be entertained by one bowl of cheerios (of course, the organic whole-grain version called “oaty bites”) for the entire time it takes mom to clean a sinkload of dishes (time has come to be measured not by minutes or hours but by such units. Nap units. Cheerio Bowl units). Mostly the cheerios get scattered across the floor- but some make it to your mouth (pincer grasp, and then flattening your hand against the mouth. Success rate: 20% in the mouth: 80% on the floor). Whole-grain spaghetti noodles are equally fun to play with. They get dangled in the air and swung around in circles and carefully hand-fed to Nico. Bananas are a new passion- I actually have to stow them in the fridge to keep them out of sight- because if you see one you start making the “mmmm eemmm mmaa” broken stereo bleating sound previously reserved only for my boob. Bananas are much messier than cheerios or spaghetti so usually you will get stripped down to your knickers, so that you can paint the world with your banana fist. There is this very large wooden salad bowl we have, and a really cute thing to do is put the naked baby in it, pour some cheerios straight from the box into the bowl, and hand you a piece of banana. Baby Cereal! I guess in this scenario you are playing the role of The Milk.

We are starting to teach you sign language. Water. Milk. Ball. Mother. Father. Doggy. Cat. Bird. Shoes. The first time I have actually seen you entranced by the television screen was when we were watching Signing Times. We lay on our bed together with our heads at the foot of the bed like two kids at a slumber party, and you strained your hand towards the screen, wanting to pet the little kids putting on their shoes. You are fascinated by other little children, and when we meet other babies you practically lunge at them in your desire to touch their face. I have to restrain your enthusiasm, saying “gentle”, as most are intimidated and start to cry or hide against their mamas, overwhelmed by your enthusiasm and/or your apparent desire to consume them. Lets just put it this way : You, my sweet, are no shrinking flower. You are friendly and open, curious and flirtatious. Even to strangers. The shyness and separation anxiety predicted for 8-9 months old has not taken place yet- and may never happen at this rate. If you have been freshly snacked and slept, you can play content in somebody else’s presence for a long time (especially if I am out of sight/mind/smell).
Okay, that should probably be it for now. You are planting rasberries on the living room floor amidst a pile of off-loaded books and it is time to take you and Nico for a walk in the warm rain.


June 4, 2009

The newest joke (starting the last few weeks) is that you have learned to click (or clop?) your tongue against the roof of your mouth. You wake up and it is one of the first things you do, have a bout of tongue clicking with Mom and Dad. You seem surprised and delighted to find out that pretty much everybody you meet seems to know this game too. Ros loves playing it with you and gets even more excited than you to play it.

Favorite games include having mom or dad put things into their mouths and pretend to growl like a dog, shaking their heads back and forth. For instance: Dad and White Plastic Hanger in the Backseat. A lot of mouth humour in general. You love to be bitten. Consumed. Eaten up. Slurped. Munched from head to toe. Feets are the funnest snack. You have your hand constantly plunged into the mouth of whoever is holding you. Probing dentition, exploring the cavity. Our little dentist, we say.

You have started waving a lot more now. We can almost get you to wave upon command (Say bye-bye!) Although it is still mostly spontaneous and often disassociated from context of arrivals and departures.

Favorite things:
Shoes. (the shoe box- emptying it out. Mouthing high heels, flip flops. Your new blue crocs from Grandma- favorite squeaking chew toy ever.)
Feet. Sucking on wiggling toes. (Moses supposes his toeses are roses. But Moses supposes erroneously. For nobodies toeses are poesies of roses, as Moses supposes his toesies to be). Aunt Joy calls you Grumpy toes. Sleepy toes. I do the same.
Kitties.
Nico.

May 4, 2009

Sava’s jokes: May

1)When mommy or daddy cough, you look at us and smile really big, thinking we are making a joke. I think it is because Jamba is always going “Hey Sava, who am I??? cough cough cough,” pretending to be you….

2) Today, you lay against my belly in bed and gave me a raspberry. I laughed really hard cuz it tickled and also the businesslike way you went about it. You looked up at me and grinned really hard. Then you leant down to do it again. I laughed really hard again- big belly laughs this time cuz it was so funny, and tickled. So you did it again- and really quickly looked up to catch me laugh…. This went on for awhile…. Until you were just leaning down “as if” to give me a raspberry, but you would look up really quick to catch me laugh.

3) You have developed the habit, in the last few weeks, of popping your binky out of your mouth with your teeth clenched so that it makes a popping noise. You love that game. It started with the light blue “orthodontic” binky that is shaped weird- like a drop of water- and for which previously we had no use.